Pauline Kael

As director and star, Olivier succeeds with the soliloquies as neither he nor anyone else ever did on film before; they're intimate, yet brazen.

The film is distinguished by the fine performances of Nicholson and Quaid, and by remarkably well-orchestrated profane dialogue. It's often very funny. It's programmed to wrench your heart, though-it's about the blasted lives of people who discover their humanity too late.

Frank Sinatra’s performance is pure gold, but the director, Otto Preminger, goes for sensationalism; the film is effective, but in a garish, hyperbolic, and dated way.

One of the strongest of all American movies...The picture is emotionally memorable, though - it has a powerful cumulative effect; when it's over you know you've seen something.

This asinine story just about smothers the good-natured hoofing.

It started a new cycle in screen entertainment by demonstrating that a murder mystery could also be a sophisticated screwball comedy.

One of M-G-M's powerhouse moralizing "family" entertainments, it's beefy and rousing, with almost guaranteed tears and laughter for children.

A first-rate, cunning, shapely thriller, directed by Joseph Ruben (Dreamscape), from a nifty screenplay by the crime novelist Donald E. Westlake.

What happened to the Kubrick who used to slip in sly, subtle jokes and little editing tricks? This may be his worst movie. He probably believes he's numbing us by the power of his vision, but he's actually numbing us by its emptiness. [13 July 1987, p.75]

This isn't much of a movie but it manages to be funny a good part of the time anyway.

D.W. Griffith's epic celebration of the potentialities of the film medium--perhaps the greatest movie ever made and the greatest folly in movie history.

It's an erratic and, finally, disappointing picture (it loses its snap). Yet you keep rooting for it, because Elizabeth McGovern, as the assault victim, a cocktail waitress, has the style and resources that the other two leads lack, and the cinematography, by Gil Taylor, his a snazzy verve, and Hanson has some clever ideas, such as the way he sets up a courtroom sequence and the way he directs the almost mute psycho (the chilling, well-cast Brad Greenquist).

What the play was supposed to be about -- which was dim enough in the original -- is even more obscure in the script that he and Richard Brooks (then a screenwriter) prepared, but the movie is so confidently and entertainingly directed that nobody is likely to complain.

The film is hair-raising because of what Elvis turns into.

John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, parodying themselves while looking exhausted. When the movie starts, you have the sense of having come in on a late episode of a TV series.

Innocuous musical version of A Christmas Carol, starring Albert Finney looking glum. The Leslie Bricusse music is so forgettable that your mind flushes it away while you're hearing it.

Irene Dunne's way with a quip is to smile brightly and wring it dry, but she's at her best here.

The movie is so ornate and so garrulous about telling the dirty truth that it's a camp classic: a Cinderella story in which the prince turns out to be impotent.

A combination of raw pulp and gooey kitsch.

Costa-Gavras's antipathy to Americans appears to be so deep-seated that he can't create American characters. The only real filmmaking is in the backgrounds: in the anxious, ominous atmosphere of a city under martial law -- the sirens, the tanks, the helicopters, the feeling of abnormal silences and of random terror.

An inspired piece of casting brought Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn together. This is a comedy, a love story, and a tale of adventure, and it is one of the most charming and entertaining movies ever made.

This clumsy, naive film was banned and argued about in so many countries that it developed a near-legendary status.

The cinematography is very ordinary, and most of the staging is uninspired, but Lange has real authority, and the performance holds you emotionally. People cry at this movie though it sin't sentimental - it's an honest tearjerker.

Ersatz art of a very high grade, and one of the most enjoyable movies ever made.

Lester's decorative clutter is the best thing about the film: he loves scurrilous excess. But the whole thing feels hectic and forced. You want some gallantry and charm; you don't want joke, joke, joke.

It's something of a mess, but this mess--and The Entertainer, also a mess--are possibly the most exciting films to have come out of England in this period.

The best that can be said about this jumbled scrapbook of Joan Crawford's life from her middle years to the end is that it doesn't seem to get in the way of its star, Faye Dunaway, who gives a startling, ferocious performance.

The play was built on topical jokes and a series of vaudeville turns, and in this version the jokes are flat and the turns seemed forced and not very funny.